How The Internet Has Grown Since It Was First Switched On"Everything has expanded by a factor of a million since we turned it on in 1973. The number of machines on the network, the speeds of the network, the kind of memory capacity that's available, it's all 10 to the sixth. I would say that there aren't too many systems that have been designed that can handle a millionfold scaling without completely collapsing. But that doesn't mean that it will continue to work that way." The New York Times 12/28/13